


planteriums reaching through

by plaxhums



Series: fire and gold, lightning in a bottle [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Canon Compliant, Friends to Lovers, Gay Keith (Voltron), M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), Pre-Relationship, The Princess Bride References, To a point, because I also took liberties with measurements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaxhums/pseuds/plaxhums
Summary: He reverently mapped the projected stars on his jeans, until a boy came through to sweep them away and showed him something more.





	planteriums reaching through

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this...gosh, two years ago? I changed very little and added a little to what's since been confirmed canon, but I did leave some pre-canon ideas sprinkled in.

It was easier to slink into the control room unnoticed than he thought it would be with Coran and Pidge keeping the weirdest hours and the space mice popping up out of _nowhere_ constantly. Keith moved to a control board, holding his breath as he listened to the Castle’s hum in the quiet hour.

He had fumbled a bit trying to get Allura’s light show up and running - he wasn’t even trying to get it settled on one particular constellation, just reached a hand out to follow the trail of a comet in motion when suddenly the entire projection went spinning. He slammed his eyes shut against the onslaught of dizziness, though the lights still danced behind his eyelids, and threw his arms up; a yell torn from his lips.

The rough growl of his voice echoed in the room, he opened his eyes frantically glancing back toward the hallway to make sure someone hadn’t heard him or could come running to investigate.

Could blaming it on lingering phantom venom in the castle still be within the realm of blame? _Ooor_ had he expired that excuse when he had broken the-

Keith shook his head, turning back from the doorway to the projection. He wasn’t expecting the Milky Way - that would have been too cliche and besides, he wasn’t really looking for that one - but wherever he _did_ land, had more than plenty to look at. He sucked in a breath, there were at least 14 planets and maybe a hundred moons. Planets with thin rings or wide rings. One smaller planet was almost completely hidden behind its many rings that looped and expanded like the years on a tree. His eyes traced the room at a crawl and it could have been seconds or hours or maybe the entire night by the time his eyes fell to his shoes, studying the neon storms curling over varying constellations and blips of untold worlds on moons and planets and asteroid belts hovering by his ankles. The blue lights were stark against the scuffed up knees of his black jeans where they glowed and pulsed with life. He - carefully, very carefully not to send the entire room spinning again - raised his hands, slowly uncurling his fingers and, okay, he felt _something_ watching the light of stars wink back up at him from his palms.

He huffed a laugh, “The Garrison’s got nothing on this.”

Keith shrugged out of his jacket, folding it end over end before placing it on floor. The cool temperature of the floor felt good against his back and shoulders, slowly easing him down from the high of beating another one of the gladiator’s levels. It soothed the dull, satisfying ache in his muscles.

Space didn’t really adhere to internal time clocks (adjusting their human bodies to the constant dark of space had been the _worst_ and deemed fit to even deal them jet lag that lasted for whatever two and a half weeks looked like out here.), but at least on some biological basis Earthlings and Alteans had synchronized enough that there was a solid block of time where everyone was quiet, sleeping or getting around to it. When they converted 24 hours to ticks for Allura and Coran, they had gone on for ages how _infinitesimal_ human days were, how no wonder why they were still primitive. It had been a trip and he _still_ got a migraine thinking about the formulas and charts that had littered the control room in the mathematical process.

So, he didn’t believe Coran and Allura literally went to bed when they did, Altean days had translated to around 32 hours with only _six_ of them needed for rest.

Altean militia worked on four.

Children and adolescents were given eight, but when you reached maturity and able-bodied it was considered lazy.

Honestly, he was just glad Shiro had made it apparent from day one that sleep wasn’t really a matter of negotiation with humans, especially teenagers. He omitted the little detail where the Garrison trained them like the army, up and in uniform before the sun so much as grazed the horizon. Keith didn’t need nine to nine and a half each night, but the look on Coran and Allura’s faces when Shiro had told them stopped Keith from correcting him.

A middle ground was found and, unfortunately, an automatic timer had been put in place on the training deck to shut down after a certain time at ‘night’- as requested by Shiro, chief of curfew police.

Which is what brought him here, breath evening out and muscles still buzzing with an entire solar system arced around him. It reminded him of the desert - weird, since it wasn’t like the desert _at all_ and he _hated_ the desert towards the end of it. The wind had been brutal out there sometimes, turning the skin on his face raw (which is why he had to start wearing the bandanna, not as a fashion statement in homage to old cowboy movies like Lance had accused him of), but it was far off the Garrison’s radar, and property line, he had checked. Not so much that he was biased, which he unabashedly _was_ , the Garrison worked more like a prison with curfew enforcers ( _guards_ that probably did a term on the Brute Squad) and always a light on, somewhere. Of course the instructors and government officials didn’t have curfews, certainly not for the scientists constantly churning out new tech to beat out other countries. Midnight and sometimes you could barely see your shadow on the sidewalk.

But the desert?

Miles and miles and miles out from the Garrison?

It was like space.

He’d use the filched hovercraft and siphoned the fuel energy to get it running just to go out farther, as far as he could go with enough to get there and back and a little left over in case something came up. There was a trail of ridges cut out from thousands of years erosion that he could lay out on and it was like it was just him and the sky - no other point of land high enough to break his line of sight, to break the illusion. It’s what he felt in the cockpit, piloting to the highest point in the sky until the only thing bringing him down was the radio fuzz laced with the familiar, warm voice of his instructor telling him the takeoff example had _sufficiently_ been done 1200 feet ago-

_“Now, bring it back in, cadet, before Iverson really does think you’ve hot-wired it this time.”_

_He chuckled into the comm, “Hey, all he had was a chip on his shoulder and circumstantial evidence, but copy that, Shiro.”  
_

Just him and the sky.

It set something like butterflies and lightning loose in his stomach.

Back in the desert, he got the chance to remap the sky like he did as a kid, not in vectors or pounds of air pressure, but constellations. He’d all but forgotten about the stories he had strung together to memorize the placement of each if he looked backward or forward, up or down. He always liked Aquila the Eagle in summer and Ursa Major the Great Bear in spring, but his favorite was Orion in winter even the relentless teasing from Shiro about Keith always being ready for a fight too hadn’t bothered him (he may have gotten one or two newer digs in since _of course_ Keith’s bayard is a sword).

Sure he missed the familiarity of the Milky Way, but it wasn’t so bad laying under the jumbled mass of stars he didn’t know the names of. It gave him a little bit of freedom, no human eyes had laid on the stars or planets and he could trace out his own constellations - like the mice or maybe one that immortalizes the time he punched Sendak, he’s not picky.

He fit his hand under his head, cushioning it better against the floor and stretched out a leg. He could lay there for hours, even if it meant getting two hours sleep tops before Shiro was knocking on his door for wake-up ca-

_“Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world. Closing time, turn all of the lights on over e-ver-y boy and e-ver-y girl.”_

Keith cursed under his breath and sat up, mentally scanning through a list of escape possibilities. Maybe if he made a run for it Lance (because it was obviously Lance, no one had that much bravado singing to themselves in the middle of the night - let alone _that_ song - and because the universe _hated_ him.) wouldn’t catch him? He could easily hide out in a shadowed corner of the room while Lance cut the projection, mumbling to himself about it being Pidge.

Keith would _never_ be the first suspect, when she’d left it up and running more times than any of them could count.

Or maybe wigged out to think it was the castle venom and high tail it back to his room? Again the shelf life on that was still fuzzy.

But was that what happened?

_No._

_“Closing time, you don’t have to go home, but ya can’t stay here. I know who I want to take me ho-”_

The second he sat up and turned around it was just in time to startle Lance on his way past the doorway, he jumped at the sudden movement, frozen in some weird combative stance that just highlighted his lanky limbs and then, took to blinking owlishly back at Keith once he snapped back to himself. His thin brows rose high on his forehead when they made eye contact and Keith groaned as Lance pulled out one of his earbuds. Keith could hear the guitar riffs all the way from his spot halfway across the room. Didn’t he know that could cause him permanent hearing loss? And being a Paladin sort of meant they were supposed to be at their peak form.

It was torture watching Lance look around the room slowly, so _agonizingly_ slowly. He was going to ride Keith’s case about being some dopey romantic for weeks, probably _years_ knowing Lance.

He was doomed.

There was no way he was getting out of this.

He’d be nagged and laughed at for being some dopey romantic that _liked to take long naps under artificial stars_.

Lance nodded his head once, “‘Sup.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “I’ll punch you if you tell anyone.”

Lance snorted and rolled his eyes as he walked into the room, “That’s dramatic. Dunno what you’ve got going on in that messy mullet head of yours but I guarantee you _‘likes to cool down after training by watching the stars’_ is weak material - we were literally enrolled in the same school because we _like_ this stuff. Mind if I pull up a jacket?”

He didn’t say anything, only narrowed his eyes and scooted his jacket over so they wouldn’t be sitting too close together.

Lance sighed, folding his jacket over and fixing the hood as extra cushion. When he laid down, he offered Keith one of the ear pieces on his headphones; turning his phone off and pocketing it with both earbuds when Keith shook his head. It was almost unnerving having someone do that, making a show of giving him their undivided attention and including him without a second thought. Especially when it came from Lance _‘KEITH AND LANCE, NECK-AND-NECK, RIVAL PILOTS, I'll stick YOU in a worm whole!_ ’ McClain.

Lance situated his hands under his head and looked up.

Keith had barely caught the almost imperceptible gasp from Lance. Part of him hated that he only did because he was still watching him.

Not in a weird way. He just still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t going to turn into some sort of roast at his expense, he had to keep his guard up.

“This isn’t the Milky Way.”

“Nope.”

“It’s not any of the ones we’ve received distress signals from either?” Lance scanned the room fervently and Keith distantly wondered if he saw the same constellations or if he formed his own on the unexplored frontier.

Keith laid back down, looking back up at the stars and slowly raising his hand in the air. “Nah, but finding _this_ one…wasn’t exactly intentional. Just, uh, don’t wave your arms in the air or anything like that. Trust me.”

“Got it.” The blue paladin tilted his head, shuffling his legs as he moved the toe of his sneaker out of the rings of a planet. “When I was a kid, I went through at least 20 packs of those glow-in-the-dark stars and planets.” Lance laughed, “I’m pretty sure the white sticky tack is permanently fused into our ceiling.”

Lance looked over at him, expectantly, and Keith felt apprehension, they were sharing, _this was a thing_ , he thought before the words came stumbling out far too easily. “I never got to do the glow-stars-on-the-ceiling thing, I never stayed anywhere long enough.”

For a moment, he was afraid he had broken some unspoken agreement when Lance flinched, like the clunky words had punched his side. Keith was sure everyone knew his business after the incident with Griffin, the Garrison was overrun with gossips and rumor mills and, unfortunately, he had been the unlucky candidate to have their rumor confirmed as fact. He also didn't exactly go out of his way to stay off everyone's radar, for better or worse. Just as he thought he was going to drown in awkward and left to wallow in his crap communication skills, Lance spoke up.

“Did you ever want them?”

Keith huffed bemusedly, “Not really, my dad and I lived in the desert, so we saw the real thing that far out from the base. I didn’t really care to notice space as a career or anything until I was shipped off to the Garrison. It was kind of a last stop as a ward of the state - either make something of my life and stop being a parasite on society or go back to juvenile detention.”

Lance cringed. “ _That_ sounds like one of Iverson’s more rallying pep talks. Dude, that’s…that’s quiznaked. Or is it _Quiznacked_?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re saying them the say way, does it really matter?” Keith shrugged. “And I didn’t always know I wanted this or even _liked_ it that much, but then, I _did_. I didn’t mind the lectures or the homework or mandatory assignments that had us set an alarm at 2 a.m. to catch a meteor shower if it got me at the pilot controls.”

“Who knew? Keith Kogane _actually_ listening in class.” Lance scrunched his eyebrows in thought, his words hedged nervously. “But, you never paid attention in the classes we had together? That is, when you bothered to show up at all.”

“Things changed after my first handful of times in the simulator and I got assigned to pilot class. It was fine for awhile, Shiro was the instructor and he bailed me out of hot water I don’t know how many times. For the first time, I could see something past detention halls and rides shoved in the back of official vehicles. He was even looking into guardianship papers.”

Lance’s face lit up. “ _No way_ , man.”

“Yeah, it was pretty cool. But then, the Kerberos assignment came up and Shiro had to leave for prep and Iverson stepped in. ‘The Garrison Machine’ started to make sense to me and I _hated_ it. People wouldn’t stop pushing me further and further - Takashi Shirogane was going up into space and there was someone that needed to fill in as top of the class, the next Garrison success story.

“Suddenly, Shiro wasn’t coming back and it went from being honed for his place to _“Maybe you can learn from his mistakes.”_ Got caught breaking curfew to pilot illegal space crafts on a racing circuit and on top of the drop in my grades and the fights, that was it.” Keith sat up and rested his arms on his knees. “I had kinda forgotten what it was like to look up at the sky and not see government chains.”

“Understandable.” Lance shrugged as he stood, aloof. “That’s great and all - I mean, congrats on finding your passion again and an unexpected knack for poetics - but using your free time just laying underneath a projection isn’t the solution, Black Parade.”

Keith bristled, his voice racking up a few octaves _again_. “Are you kidding me?! We were having a moment, I just spilled my _guts_ out to you!”

Lance ignored him to shut down the projection and Keith felt his blood pressure rise. Every single time.  _“Nope, don’t remember. Didn’t happen.”_

“You’re an a-”

“Take a deep breath, Mayday Parade.“ The blue paladin scoffed and waved his arms dramatically. “My point is: you’re spending all of your time down here when the real thing is right _there,_ man. C’mon, I have something to show you.”

Keith threw his hands up and huffed. “Wh- Those aren’t even the same thing, _Lance_. One is a song and the other is a band.”

Lance cackled and he realized too late that he had walked into something. “You would know, mullet. Now, let’s jet.”

Keith didn’t get a chance to answer as Lance yanked him to his feet and dragged him toward the door. It was almost dizzying the amount of hallways and turns he was pulled in. Just when he thought they would be lost in the far caverns of the Castle for eternity, they passed a door and Lance threw on the emergency breaks, nearly reverse slingshot-ting them into the door frame.

“I found this place about a month or so ago when I was definitely not snooping.”

“How am I supposed to take that sentence as you _not_ actively admitting you were snooping?”

“I’ll have you know, I was stumbling innocently back from the bathroom and missed our hallway at whatever substitutes as 3 a.m. around here.”

“Fair enough.”

Lance yanked him in front of a door, it was just like every single other door in the castle - crisp and shiny and suspiciously clean if Lance had been coming back and forth here. He was not about to release his breath yet because this wasn’t a Saturday morning cartoon where hidden rooms or forbidden wings were marked with a creepy encryption or giant, bold faced letter spelling KEEP OUT. Allura’s sudden wrath if the mice sent her some ESP message that they were lurking around her house and just going wherever they pleased was a lot more likely though.

He didn’t know what he was expecting, everyone had learned through individualized experiences the hard way about expecting or assuming certain outcomes from Lance’s ‘surprises'.

Lance finally dropped his hand to enter a code into the key pad, bringing Keith to another detailed revelation.

Since when did Lance keep up physical contact with him for extended periods of time without griping about it? (i.e. the cuffs, any time they had to train in pairs, or that one time they were the only ones cuffed as a punishment because Coran couldn’t find a garment big enough to fit both of them after Pidge enlightened him on ‘Get Along’ shirts.) And since when was _he_ not painfully aware of every second of physical contact? He blamed Shiro’s comforting dad shoulder pats that lingered for just the right amount of time and Hunk’s not-really-terrible group hugs. The point was, it was still Lance.

Oil and water or, after that one mission, lighter fluid.

It wasn’t a bad thing, it just shocked him.

The doors swooshed open, scrambling Keith out of his thoughts as Lance swept an arm out in a grand gesture. “After you.”

An observation deck definitely wasn’t one of his possible guesses.

 _The air lock?_ Yeah, maybe. But not this. “It’s an observation deck, Lance.”

“Thank you, dropout.”

“When are you going to let that go? And technically, you, Pidge, and Hunk are dropouts too, so that insult is null and void.”

“Okay, but we dropped out to save the universe, you dropped out to go sulk in a sand dune.”

His fingers flexed at his side, palm warm and begrudgingly memorizing the feel of Lance’s next to his. He wanted to get along with the team, he didn’t particularly enjoy feeling like the last pick in gym class any time he hung out with Pidge, Hunk, and Lance while they talked endlessly about inside jokes and stories, but he figured it would be harder than _this_. Keith couldn’t name the day or hour or which planet they had been on when he and Lance didn’t constantly need a buffer or ref. It had been irritating sure after a year out in the desert doing his own, quiet thing whenever, going from that to knowing that he could have been _walking off the edge of a cliff_ and Lance would still be trailing a few paces behind him and working to catch up - talking about marketplace stalls that looked cool or complaining about one of their old professors or asking if it mattered which restroom he went in or goading him into making puns or carrying on a conversation in puns after he had found out that Keith had seen The Princess Bride more than once and knew some of the references.

It was something.

That still didn’t change the fact he was standing on a regular, old observation deck. He scrunched his eyebrows as he looked into the dark room, eyes trailing deliriously high to follow the dome of the ceiling.

“A little faith, please, Keith.” Lance quipped as he watched Keith look increasingly doubtful.

“Okay, last time you said _that_ we almost wound up in jail on Zowhara and got a month of pod-cleaning duty for the trouble and time it took Allura and Shiro to bail us out.”

“ _Anyways_ , the point is this isn’t like the other observation decks and it’s worth it.” Lance jerked his head in a direction, sliding his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and turning on his heel.

Begrudgingly, Keith followed. Even if it turned out to be a legitimate claim the _‘it’s not like the others’_ statement made him concerned and someone had to be there in case Lance somehow wound up getting yanked out into space - again. He felt a little validated in his worry when Lance traipsed up to a window not blocked by a safety handrail.

So he didn’t feel like his hesitancy was unfounded.

He hung back as Lance turned to see if he was following, he looked like he wanted to tease Keith for being the red paladin - temperamental, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, zero impulse control - and _hesitating_ , but he didn’t. Not even an eye roll, just grinned at him. “You ever see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?”

Keith laughed in surprise, the sound full and loud as it echoed off through the high ceiling. He barely managed to wheeze, “Suddenly, _everything_ about you makes sense.”

“Ha-ha. Hilarious. Just get over here, chuckles. We don’t have all night, our wake-up call is in four hours and I want to get _some_ rest.”

Keith felt an old reflex curl on his tongue, the _“You didn’t have to stay with me.”_ all too ready. Hunk had graciously walked him through that one, just because they hadn’t known Keith as long didn’t mean they saw him as less of a friend. He still had a long road ahead of him working through what too many foster placements and a solitary year in the desert did, but he was trying. Lance raised his eyebrow, silently calling him out on it, daring him to say it out loud.

“Get over here, Kogane.” Lance faced the window again, shuffling forward until his toes were touching the window, the bright white of them reflecting in the glass. He bent forward, until his head was angled down against it.

Keith copied his stance, his hair tickling his nose where it was flattened between him and the glass, and looked down, only managing a pathetic attempt at actual words and resigning himself to an audible gasp. Lance mercifully didn’t throw the embarrassing sound back in his face, but Keith could hear his smiles in his words.

“It’s awesome, right? Back in Cuba, I would wake up right before dawn to get to the beach. There were so many of us that it was a thrill just in itself getting changed and out the door without someone waking up or already awake and asking where I was going or stop me because they wanted to go too. We’re a big family and I love them, love being around them constantly, but going out there in the morning was my quiet space. I’d paddle out as far as I could.” Something Keith doesn’t think is for him to see flits and settled itself across Lance’s face. There’s a tilt to one side of his mouth that lifted up in a way he hadn’t seen before. His eyes looked out onto the galaxy, but it wasn’t the stars he was seeing judging by the light and distant glaze that envelope his eyes.

 _‘Varadero,’_ Keith’s mind supplied, the scene forming in his head like he could smell the ocean and hear the lapping of the waves or caw of birds. The crisp wind whipping past him. It’s something private and-

_Oh._

“I’d get to where the shore was behind me and everything in my direction was sun and sky and the sun lighting up the ocean. In one tiny second of time, the sky and the water are the same and it’s just…just-

“It all feels like flying, y’know? Like, that part in the simulator where you have to maneuver through the tailspin and a dive and it looks like it’s just you free falling into nothing but sky, but way better.”

Him and sky.

And Lance.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this up on tumblr for a few months and never got it up here because I couldn't find a title for it, realized I might not find the right title, and am just making my peace with one that doesn't make sense on purpose.
> 
> Thank you again for taking your time to read and if you liked it, lemme know with a kudos or comment! Or come talk to me on [ tumblr](http://plaxhums.tumblr.com) if you want?


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